Swann's Way

between the two parts of my brain in which I used to think of them, one
of those distances of the mind which time serves only to lengthen, which
separate things irremediably from one another, keeping them for ever
upon different planes. And this distinction was rendered still more
absolute because the habit we had of never going both ways on the same
day, or in the course of the same walk, but the 'Méséglise way' one time
and the 'Guermantes way' another, shut them up, so to speak, far apart
and unaware of each other's existence, in the sealed vessels--between
which there could be no communication--of separate afternoons.

When we had decided to go the 'Méséglise way' we would start (without
undue haste, and even if the sky were clouded over, since the walk was
not very long, and did not take us too far from home), as though we were
not going anywhere in particular, by the front-door of my aunt's house,
which opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted by
the gunsmith, we would drop our letters into the box, we would tell
Théodore, from Françoise, as we passed, that she had run out of oil
or coffee, and we would leave the town by the road which ran along the